Hope and Change at the pump.

On the day Obama was inaugurated, the nationwide average for gas at the pump was $1.78.

How's that "hope and change" workin' out for ya?

Pretty well, actually thanks. Since this is becoming the latest salvo in the knee-jerk conservative's pre-election flurry, here's the context:

Gas prices recorded their greatest-in-history decline throughout the fall of 2008 as the economy crashed. In May 2008, price at the pump was nearly $4/per gallon (if you stretch, you might remember this -- especially if you ride in a truck). By the end of that month, oil was selling at a record $130 per barrel and the pump-price reflected that. In July 2008, pump price had risen to $4.11 per gallon. The escalation peaked in August, foreshadowing the market meltdown that was only weeks away.

In September 2008, everything hit the floor, and per-barrel prices recorded the largest and fastest decline in the history of OPEC through the end of December.

Just after Obama was elected (in November) OPEC took the drastic step of withdrawing over 2 million barrels from daily production in an effort to drive up prices (now down to $40 a barrel, lowest in 4 years). It didn't help. Gas hit a 5-year low in December 2008 at $1.6, in the midst of the worst financial disaster in nearly 80 years, remember: no one was buying, even at that low price. So, yeah, gas was cheap...because we were in market free-fall and our entire system was on the brink of collapse.

What helped: at least a couple of things. 1. Bush bailed out the auto industry, that very same week that OPEC reduced its production by 2 million. 2. Obama continued Bush's bailout policies and added a few of his own, notably ARRA, which put state contracts for summer road-building back on course (I was working with state contractors at the time and saw this first-hand). As the recession bottomed out, gas prices rebounded -- especially since OPEC kept production low. By the summer of 2009, fuel prices were once again north of 3.50 -- right around where they were a year before in the last year of W's Presidency.

You can look it up.

It's worth remembering all of this, as cherry-picking the pump-price for his inauguration date is becoming a nice little "gotcha" piece for those hoping he doesn't get reelected.

Customer Service

It can look like this:

Dear Mr [Suits],

Please quote the following reference number in all correspondence: xxxxxx

Thank you very much for placing your order with us. Unfortunately the following item(s) are out of stock and will take a little longer than expected to reach you.

Order Ref Product Code Short Description Date Expected

W36894226 xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx 2 Jan 12

I offer you my sincere apologies for the delay. You have my word that as soon as we have the item(s) in stock we will send them to you as soon as we can.

In the meantime, your debit or credit card will not be charged until your order is safely on its way to you. In the interest of security, we have already processed your payment if you sent us a cheque, in order to avoid keeping it on the premises overnight.

Please be assured we will not charge you for extra postage if the items are sent in more than one package. In addition, if your order is part of an exchange for a returned item, or you have already paid postage, we will not make any additional charge for delivery.

I cannot apologise enough for any inconvenience this has caused you. We pride ourselves on our service but it seems it has not lived up to our high standards this time. We will do everything we can to ensure this will not happen again.

If there is anything we can do to assist or if you wish to change your order, please do not hesitate to call our Customer Services team on xxxx xxx x000. If calling from outside the UK, please call +44 xx xxxx xxxx. You can also email us by clicking here.

Mathis Wagner
Head of Customer Services

Yes. I believe I will continue to bring you my custom, Mr. Wagner. Your ass-kissing is sufficiently sincere and, let's be honest, that's pretty much all it takes.

Witness

I've been trapped by the cable service again, and find myself watching first the final third and then the first two thirds of "The Rainmaker" on AMC. That's the beauty of cable: 150+ standard channels, most of which show nothing of value, the rest of which show the same thing enough times in a row that it becomes valueless. I won't miss it; in CT we will have internet access but not cable television. I like to think this will mean I'll read more, but internet is even more likely to distract me -- it already does, after all.

"The Rainmaker" is one of a string of 90's Grisham novels-cum-blockbusters about the legal profession. In this one, Matt Damon plays the role of newly-minted Memphis State Law School graduate Rudy Taylor, who stumbles on to the perfect client: a young man dying because he was denied a bone marrow transplant by a corrupt (read: ordinary) health insurance company, said company represented by a stereotypically slimy megafirm personified wonderfully by Jon Voight. (Voight is adept at these types: cerebral, casually corrupt apparatchiks.)

"Rainmaker" refers to two things: the case or client that makes the heavens rain money, and/or the attorney who finds clients like that.

Damon's Rudy wins the case, mainly through overwhelming evidence sustained through a combination of blind luck and a remote assist from a corrupt shyster on the lam. The not-so-subtle lesson is that even unstained righteousness requires ruthless and unprincipled champions to prevail. Christ himself would need more than Clarence Darrow; he'd need some combination of Johnny Cochrane, Don King and Jack Abramoff. Rudy, having won whilst keeping his shoes relatively free of putrescence, departs stage right with willowy domestic battery survivor Claire Danes in tow. Not a bad way to quit the law.

I left in a far less dramatic fashion, jumping ship early in the summer of 2004 after barely 8 months of billables. I was (and am) blessed to have a beauty of my own, who never blinked a lash though her glittering prince fell abruptly from elite-educated attorney-on-the-make to journeyman apprentice carpenter in two swift weeks. But I had no cache to take with me, to buoy me on my travels, nor did I understand quickly (or as it turns out, slowly) where I was headed or what it means to leave the law.

Spiritually, you're ever on the doorstep: never quite going away, yet never to reenter the hall; a beguiling contraption that others puzzle over, like an Archimedes' Trammel without a scribe. "Fascinating," they muse, "but whatever does it do?," while to lawyers you look a gelding.

What I've found myself doing is the title of this post. Most people call it "conservation," though.

In the "Rainmaker" we hear evidence (however fictionalized) of the brokenness of both our legal system and our healthcare system. We are even warned of the spectre of "government controlled" medical care -- a dire evil, ever to be feared. As the movie (and my second glass of wine) came to an end bitterness rose along with indigestion; bitter because in spite of the acrimony and strife of the intervening 13 years we haven't improved either of those systems. Indeed, with every passing year we slide further down the gullet. Since that movie was made, it is harder to win a lawsuit, harder to get a judgment, harder to get healthcare. But still we pay -- taxes, premiums, fees.

In conservation, we've reached a point where we argue the relative merits of development. We no longer argue its essential value. We no longer say "Not here." We are remaindered to "oh, well, here -- ok, but could you maybe move the building a few feet away from the wetland, the vernal pool, the already impossibly fractured habitat? And could you vent your waste in a different direction? Maybe bury it? Or store it next to the aquifer rather than dumping directly into the stream?"

We are witnesses. We may be the last witnesses, but there are millions of us. My friends who are teachers are witness to the end of the dream of equal public education. My friends in government are witness to the end of all manner of regulations and policies that either protect workers or the air or the water or the mom-and-pop saving for retirement. My scientist friends are witness to the end of endeavor for wonder's sake.

I am a witness to the vanished land. But I can't even protest its loss. The moment I raise my voice to say, "this is wrong -- more than wrong, it's suicide" the power is cut, the conversation is over, eyes glaze, doors close.

We have the power to do so much. We could do so much differently, so much better.

"Oh, we were like glory's gate, my darling. We were like that bloody shark of yours. We swam with the, um, uh — Oh, goddamn it. I had it on the plane. What was I gonna say? Ah, well." But I'll write about middle age when it's over, or more fully here.

For now I just want to record my sense of futility.

We are at war; my friends are at war.

 

2nd Marine Recon Battalion Surgeon Lieutenant my friend John S. Maddox visits with his son, Jack. From Afghanistan to Virginia. A year is a lifetime.

Yeah, but can you fry that?

Once again, another bloggist prompts me to Google* a strange new word and eyebrows lift over yet more human singularities.

Did you know people eat little birds called "ortolans?" Naturally, it's mainly the French. Here's how it works:

Catch an little ortolan and put it in a box, with plenty of food and total darkness. The ortolan (a species of bunting) responds to the constant darkness by gorging itself, growing to three or four times its original size. As you might expect from the culture that brought us foie gras, the next step is to kill the bird by literally drowning it in Armagnac. Then roast the fowl in its own fat and dine away.

Muster whatever Gallic sang froid you posses, drape your head in a napkin (either to spare your fellow diners the coming spectacle or to inhale the holy vapor emanating from the dish before you) and bite off the head. Discard. The remaining bird is consumed, les os et tous.

The practice was outlawed in 2007, but as with all things it may still be had for money and, this being France, perhaps also love.

This culinary adventure lies at the far end of the spectrum from the title of the post, which refers to an eponymous game invented by my good friends, brothers Rob and John. One year while Rob was living in Louisiana, John visited him for the winter holidays and came bearing gifts -- one of which was a "FryDaddy." John has ever been the giver of appropriate gifts: Once, upon moving in to a new apartment, I was visited by John who bestowed a jar of pigs feet. "Now if anyone who eats pigs feet comes to visit, you have them." I have them still.

I guess John felt a FryDaddy suited Louisiana. In any case, Rob and John are enthusiastic fellows. Following a day at the convict rodeo and an evening of drinking lots of brown liquor together, the night concluded by trying out the new kitchen tool with several rousing rounds of "Can you fry that?"

The verdict? Graham crackers and oreos, yes. Gummy bears? Not so much.

What would the French say?

*I have an image in my mind of the "Nighthawks" diner populated by a club of obsolescents, where the buggy-whip manufacturer sulks over a cold cup of coffee and commiserates with the former director of Encyclopedia Britannica.

Slow Foote

A bloggist of my acquaintance posted recently on Shelby Foote, the great historian and writer, whose earthly belongings went for sale recently. In that post, he linked to a wonderful CNN interview with the author. On that jump, I found a wonderful trove of interviews with other writers and personalities -- I recommend a visit.

After listening to Foote, I went through Cronkite and then Dean Brown on Ernie Pyle, and Plimpton on Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Plimpton's interview was sad -- the kid doing the questioning had all the rhythm of an average attorney doing a dry deposition. I want to like George because of his unabashed elitism, not in spite of it. But in this interview he come off sounding far too impressed with George. Snuggling up to Papa seems to fall for him into the same category as hanging around the Lions or getting in the ring with the champ, when it's really just hero worship.

Not all interviewees were as compelling as Foote, but then not all tackled anything so delicate as an attempt to explain the benefits of Jim Crow to both blacks and whites, while simultaneously conceding that it was all horribly, horribly wrong -- but only in retrospect. I don't know him from the Burns series but read about 2/3 of his Civil War trilogy and one or two others. It seems you would be hard-pressed to find a black person who would say there were good aspects of the race-divided South, as the inverse of Foote's apologia is, "Well, they thought we were animals but that meant they were nice to us most of the time. So it wasn't all bad."

But as Foote would say, in fiction there is truth, but not always fact. He is appropriately complex, and the world misses him -- and many men of that era. We have great need for slow circumspection, even for its own sake and whatever its conclusions. Even if they are wrong, at least we arrive there with plenty of warning and with time to prepare.

Perpetual Quest

They'd rather watch you walk than find space for you on the bench. Says something about both sides of the conversation. The apex of the decade in town was a low line on the beach, but reached with always an eye on far and imagined beacons. Now we look for new prospects in old fields, dragging behind us a beachcomber's trophies that look out of place inland. Beach trash.

The image is not of modest achievement, but of greater promise unfulfilled.

The Suit has been hung for a while.

I've been absent, intentionally. I'm tired, a bit. I may come back. Or not.

I'm trying to be objective. But I have a strong viewpoint. I have a bias for mutual benefit.

I'm looking for new work. I'm leaving a homeplace. I'm seeking a lilypad; I don't ask for a rainbow.

The skies have been the color of battleships for weeks, it seems, but the sun has shone whilst I've sat in the office.

Snow that is not fresh is not uplifting.

See you here from time to time.

The loss.

A short list of the more than 850 bills made into law that were authored (300+) or endorsed (550+) by Senator Edward Kennedy:

• Women, Infants and Children program (WIC); food assistance and access to health care for low-income women and children.


• State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP)


• Family Opportunity Act; expanded Medicaid to cover special-needs kids.


• COBRA


• HIPAA; limited the pre-existing conditions excuse for denial of coverage.


• Mental Health Parity law; helps ensure lifetime coverage for mental health issues.


• Ryan White Care Act; funds treatment of AIDS for hundreds of thousands of people.


• Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)


• Head Start


• Direct Lending; a program for college aid lending


• Up-armoring HUMVEE legislation, (2003 and 2005)


• Voting Rights Act; amendments, 1982


• Family and Medical Leave Act


• Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act


• Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act; keeps health insurers from nixing you based on your DNA.


• Civil Rights Act of 1991


• National Guard and Reserve Mental Health Access Act (2008)


• Higher Education Opportunity Act


• College Cost Reduction and Access Act


• Strengthen FDA oversight of approved medication (2007)


• Minimum Wage act (1996, 2007)


• Pension Protection Act


• Bioterrorism Preparedness Act


• Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act


• LIHEAP; low income heating energy assistance program


• National and Community Service Trust Act (Americorps)


• National Military Child Care Act


• WARN Act; requires companies to give 2 months notice if a plant closing will put more than 50 people out of work.


• Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act (includes mentally ill, disabled, elderly)


• Meals on Wheels Act


• National Cancer Act


• Fair Housing Act


• Immigration Act (1965); ended race-based quotas in immigration

“Don’t you find it remarkable that one of the most partisan, liberal men in the last century serving in the Senate had so many of his foes embrace him? Because they know he made them bigger, he made them more graceful by the way in which he conducted himself.”
Vice President Biden, 8-26-09

I took a vacation...

...but apparently, I'm not the only thing that's been getting some sun.

I must confess

Time to come clean, before my past catches up with me.

I was not born in these United States. The fact of the matter is that I was born in Coast General Hospital, Mombasa, Kenya.

And there's proof.

My mother was a child, a confused and frightened 14-year-old from Jersey City. She was offered as a token of fealty to Abdul Rahman Yasin OBAMA, who took her to Saudi Arabia where he was in training with a young Osama. It's a sad sordid tale.

Anyway, I feel compelled to disclose the truth, and the proof. My official Kenyan Birth Certificate:

Now you know.


Get yours today!

Today's GOP

Allow me to introduce you to the "loyal opposition." This is the Republican party today: an anti-democratic, un-American wasteland of madness and spittle.

I know there are "Republicans" out there who do not fit that description -- I even know some of them. But this is the party. These are the methods they have selected to gain control.

I'm sure there will be bruises and broken bones, and there have already been deaths.

But the worse harm is the disintegration of the democratic fabric. In a nation that was once ruled by the law and by ideas, I call it treason.

Why treason? Because this isn't dissent. It isn't argument or debate. It's negation.

A pluralistic society can withstand any ideology but one: that which insists on no ideology but itself. The only political stance that is absolutely unacceptable in an open democracy (to which we still cling), is one that will brook no compromise, no difference, no alternative.

What you are seeing today is a transition. The Republican Party has been plugging its ears and shouting "I won't hear you." Now, they are taking their fists out of their ears and putting them in your face and saying, "I won't let you speak."

If you still identify with this party, when these are its methods, that means you. Sorry.

The South Will Rise Again...

...just not on this graph.

source

Drinks! Drinks for my friends!

That classic line is from Micky Rourke's first incarnation, in his role as Bukowski, the great street poet (who always reminds me of Tom Waites -- or maybe it's the other way around) in the movie Barfly. If you haven't seen the movie, you should.

First of all, it features the absurd and pathetic life of the talented Charles Bukowski. Bukowski wrote searing poetry, and steadfastly refused to clean up his act. Like many drunks and addicts, he believed his own hype and it made him an unbearably self-righteous person to be around. But his words were worth it (if you didn't have to live with him).

Second, it's probably Rourke's best role. It prefigures his turn as "The Wrestler," before his face was battered by his earnest courtship of boxing and equally earnest pursuit of chemical living. I guess that as a man he was already tiptoeing along the edge and that gives his portrait of Bukowski/Henry Chinaski a reckless core, convincing, probably because he was barely acting.

Finally, you'll get a dose of 1987 Faye Dunaway. If you're my age or younger, you're probably not quite old enough to remember the power of Faye's sexuality (or, she may have tormented your early adolescence). In "Barfly," she plays, like Rourke, an unrepentant booze-hound. But no matter how slovenly or sick she gets, her allure burns a hole in the film. Part of the tragedy of the movie is watching that light boxed off and traded away.

Anyway, drinks.

In what will surely go down as one of his many strokes of genius, my friend Rich married my friend Kristin. Together they came up with another nice idea: revive the cocktail hour.

There are many institutions from the first half of the 20th century that have thankfully fallen to the dustbin of history: segregation, smoking in restaraunts, sock suspenders. Yet in our headlong rush into the new, we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater: Vive l'Heure de Cocktail!

In support of that effort, Kristin and Rich bring you "52 Drink-up," now added to the "Stuff and Fun" blogroll to the right of this column. Drink along, and bring the "happy" back to "happy hour!"

Socialism will grind our country down.

I mean, just look at Sweden -- card-carrying socialist nazi communist totalitarian pinkos, each and every one of 'em, just like Barry Hussein Obama (except the bikini team). Didja know he's black? And not from here? It's true -- I've seen the fake birth certifikat. It's on the interweb -- it's a fake! This guy? He went to Ghana or sumwhere in Africa, or, no, wait, he called there, right? And spoke to the Darkie's grandmama, who said she was there -- in Africa -- when Barry was born. She was there! RIGHT THERE! It's on tape and everything. How could she be there when the crossbreed came out if he came out in Hawaii? I mean, I'm here, right now and you're there -- where you are -- so there's no way I could be here if I'm gonna be there when you pop out a chillun? I can't! I'd be HERE when it was born! So if someone asked me, "Were you there when this lady had her baby" an I said, yes I was right here, then you couldn't have had your baby there, you should have had it here! GET it?

Where was I? Oh yeah, Sweden. Fuckers.

The US ranks #5 worldwide in per capita income, with a $33,070 average. You have to tumble all the way to #8 before you get to the Swedes, who average out at $25,105. Stupid Swedes! I've got $8,000 here that says you're weak!

(Of course, skewing that statistic is probably the US's dominance of the "richest people in the world" list, Where the top two (both American) each have twice as much money as 3, 4, 5 or 6. Even among the stratospherically rich, the richest are much richer than their own "middle" class. Number 1 (Bill Gates) has $40B. Numbers 98 (a tie among 6) each have a paltry $5B. And yes, that's "B" as in "billion." To put that in perspective, if you cashed out America's four richest men (Billy Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison and Jim Walton), you'd be able to balance every single state budget deficit in the United States. And they'd still have about $5,000,000,000 to split among themselves.)

Anyway, what do those stupide Swedes (I say "stupide" 'cause it's French, just like the Swedes -- stupid froggy swishy Swedes) get in exchange for being only the 8th richest country in the world (losers)?



Gah. Could you imagine? That would be horrible, just horrible. That's why we must all band together to stop our rapid slide! I want to keep living in a world where the Eagle soars ("like She's never soared before!"), we dominate the billionaires list (USA! USA! USA!) and you have to beg for unpaid time off to have a baby and hope to Sonny Jeezus that it doesn't torpedo your career. Wimins belong in the kitchen anyways. I'm Amurkin, dammit! Profit is God's holy water, blessings for the blessed! What? Huh? What? Fuck you!

What it means

Some things were meant to be sung.

Some of those things make absolutely no sense otherwise.

One of my favorite songs in college was "Plush" by Stone Temple Pilots. To this day, I can not tell you what the hell he's singing about:

Where ya going for tomorrow?
Where ya going with that mask I found?
And I feel, and I feel
When the dogs begin to smell her
Will she smell alone?

WTF? Yet it works as a song (particularly as a pop song, for which the bar of coherence is quite low).

With that said, perhaps the biggest mistake Sarah Palin made (aside from, oh, everything else) was delivering an "I Quit" speech instead of an "I Quit" song. Or, if you long for days of berets and smoky cafes, a poem:

Healthcare in Canadia

This is a complete repost from someone on Democratic Underground calling themselves "Canuckistanian" regarding socialized medicine.

I'll only add that when I heard Rep. Louie Gohmert (R - Texas) say, "I know enough about Canadian care, and I know this bureaucratic, socialized, piece of crap they have up there, it gives them a generalized standard of care ... 1 in 5 people have to die because they went to socialized medicine," all I can say is, Louie, just to remind you, they have this thing called "democracy" up there, and if they really hated it so much, I'm sure they'd change it.

Canuckistanian:

As a Canadian I marvel at all of these terms that are so common to Americans, but are virtually unknown to us.

Here's a partial list off the top of my head:

1. "Out of network"
There are no "networks" in Canada. Doctors and hospitals are not affiliated with private insurance companies. Doctors are private business entities and hospitals are usually run by non-profit boards or regional health associations.

2. "COBRA"
Health coverage is NOT tied to your place of employment in any way. So any COBRA-like scheme is unnecessary.

3. "Co-Pay"
The government pays 100% of basic care, 100% of the time. Drugs are not covered, but are subsidized by government to a point. And because of mass buys, discounts are obtained from the drug companies. That's why our prices are so much lower. Most employers offer a drug plan that pays for 100% of drug cost coverage.

4. "monthly premium\deductible"
Wazzat? We don't consider our health to be the same as our possessions.

5. "waiting for approval"
Doctors are the sole decision makers for health care. NOBODY influences or delays their decisions, warns them of costs or prevents them from giving treatment for any reason.

6. "Government interference"
The provincial government in each province PAYS for whatever services doctors provide. No questions asked. Unless the procedure is experimental, not medically necessary or unwarranted, doctors cannot deny basic care - by law.

7. "Health insurance lobby"
There are NO insurance companies for basic care, only companies for providing insurance for travelers. No money to be made here.

8. "bureaucracy"
When we visit a hospital or doctor's office, we walk in, get treated, walk out. No "applications", "registrations" or any other kind of paperwork is required. We NEVER have to talk to a single "government official" or wait for a "judgment".

9. "PRE-EXISTING CONDITION"
This is such a foreign concept to us. A Canadian's usual reaction to the explanation of this term is astonishment.

I'm glad to see that a sane health care system is within reach in America. Fight for it. It's WORTH it.

Music, Music, Music

File this under "Meet the Blogroll," but don't file it away. I knew "Pop Argot," the author of "Baby I've Been Thinking," back in college, and stumbled across his 'blog a few years ago. I don't remember exactly how.

Anyway. If you're a lover of pop music, or just music, you've got to check out his site. Nearly every day brings a new hit, or an obscure pop tune that deserves more exposure, or a list of great tunes from a certain era or on a theme -- all conveniently linked to recordings or videos so you can enjoy it all over again (or for the first time).

I'm consistently impressed by the breadth of his knowledge, and I love the trivia he brings to the site -- like an actually good FM DJ from the days (not so long ago) when a DJ had some leeway to put his or her stamp on a show. Check him out.

What can science do?

I highly recommend this post, "What Questions Can Science Answer?" on the Discover Magazine website. It's a great beginning at a more cogent popular understanding of the nature of science, and how, therefore, we might employ what it tells us in structuring our civic lives (the big kerfuffle these days). Here's a sample:

Alpha Centauri A is a G-type star a little over four light years away. Now pick some very particular moment one billion years ago, and zoom in to the precise center of the star. Protons and electrons are colliding with each other all the time. Consider the collision of two electrons nearest to that exact time and that precise point in space. Now let’s ask: was momentum conserved in that collision? ...

...The scientific answer to this question is: of course, the momentum was conserved. Conservation of momentum is a principle of science that has been tested to very high accuracy by all sorts of experiments, we have every reason to believe it held true in that particular collision, and absolutely no reason to doubt it; therefore, it’s perfectly reasonable to say that momentum was conserved.

A stickler might argue, well, you shouldn’t be so sure. You didn’t observe that particular event, after all, and more importantly there’s no conceivable way that you could collect data at the present time that would answer the question one way or the other. Science is an empirical endeavor, and should remain silent about things for which no empirical adjudication is possible.

But that’s completely crazy. That’s not how science works. Of course we can say that momentum was conserved. Indeed, if anyone were to take the logic of the previous paragraph seriously, science would be a completely worthless endeavor, because we could never make any statements about the future. Predictions would be impossible, because they haven’t happened yet, so we don’t have any data about them, so science would have to be silent.

The bloggist (this is a good post -- I think he rises above "blogger" status) has put his finger on the fulcrum around which all of our public debates about science (abortion, stem cells, environmental degradation, climate change, class action lawsuits based on pollution) turn. At every junction, conservatives demand absolute certainty as to each and every instance with empirical evidence from that instance to back it up. They demand not just a consistent history of "smoking guns," but the very gun used for the crime in question (and usually a few eyewitnesses as well -- preferable themselves).

If that is the standard -- as it has increasingly been -- then science always loses. This level of absolute determinism can only be found through religious certainty. Ironic, then, that so many who demand specific certainty from science -- which offers libraries of evidence -- adopt that absolute certainty regarding religion, which offers practically none.

Anyway, the article and the comments that follow are engagingly well-written (and by no means taken from the same sheet of music). Recommend.